


should have beens could always be

by callievalpoli



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Navel-Gazing, Reclaim BtVS???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:27:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29502015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callievalpoli/pseuds/callievalpoli
Summary: Uhhhh, yeah.Don't know what this is.Haven't written in a while.Caught the Chipperish vid on how to handle the confirmation of what JW is, and wrote... this?If anyone actually enjoys it, *handwaves* maybe I could, ya know, do another thing. Or continue this thing. Yeah.
Kudos: 3





	should have beens could always be

**Peace**

The town of Sunnydale is wrong. Everyone knows it. Everywhere there are whisperings—murmurings. 

No matter where you go, you hear talk of someone not making it home the day before. You see pictures—those kinds of pictures usually relegated to Lifetime movies—of missing kids. You smell the stale-sour smell of… something. Just over your shoulder. If you turn fast enough, maybe you’ll see it.

You are _never_ fast enough, though.

Not to catch sight of the thing that goes bump in the night.

Not unless you _are_ the thing that goes bump in the night.

**Happiness**

Every morning Joyce makes a deal with herself. She’s allowed a half hour of quiet time before she has to be the gallery owner, bill payer, Buffy’s mother that she has to be the remainder of the day. She wakes up a half hour early and watches the sun rise in summer or reads a book in winter or watches the rain in spring. She doesn’t think during that time. She doesn’t think of how different life could have been if only Hank hadn’t cheated, if only she’d married someone else, if only Buffy hadn’t been having so many problems, if only she’d had another child. She doesn’t think. She just enjoys—she just enjoys being alive another day.

After that half hour, she puts on that skin. She puts on that Joyce.

And, well, _that_ Joyce is a good Joyce to be.

**Grief**

There’s a splinter. In his palm, just above his—what was that called again? Oh yeah, lifeline. Xander scoffs out a huff of a laugh. Lifeline. Right.

How could his palm have a splinter from the stupid _stupid_ stake that—

That killed…

There’s a drop of liquid—water? There’s a drip, right on top of the _god_ -damned splinter. 

“Fuck,” he says. He’s angry. He _should_ sound angry. Why does his voice sound like that. It’s not right.

“Xander.”

He shouldn’t sound—what? Hoarse? That’s not him. It doesn’t sound like him. “Fuck!” It’s better, louder at least. Clearer. There’s more liquid on his hand. A mini-river tracing his lifeline and heartline.

“Xander.”

It was wrong. How could he have done that! _How?_ Killed his best friend. Killed _Jesse._ “Jesus. Fuck!”

A hand covers his hand. It’s paler than his, smaller than his. “It’s okay, Xander.”

He looks at that hand, can’t look up at the face of the one it belongs to, the face of the only person he betrayed as much as _him_. “Willow. I’m sorry. Jeez, Will, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“Shh” she says, and he’s being tugged and tucked into her side, familiar red hair tickling his nose. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

“But—but Willow! He’s dead! Jesse is dead!” He looks up at her then, her big eyes full of tears even through the water in his own eyes. “He’s dead because I killed him—because I put a _stake_ through his _heart_.”

“No!” Willow says. “Xander. No.” She looks at him, and though her lip wobbles, her voice is firm. “Alexander Harris, you didn’t kill Jesse. A vampire did. You can’t blame yourself. I won’t let you.” Her face breaks, then, tears falling heavily from her eyes. “Xander. Jesse wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.”

Xander collapses, a weird wheezing scream coming from his throat and eyes bleeding tears.

Willow catches him.

**Love**

_He knows._

“You know, I wasn’t even talking about you,” Buffy says. Her heart beats fast-fast-fast. He’s there, so close, if she leaned over, their lips would touch.

“Good,” Angel says. He turns away. “That’s good. Buffy, it’s not just that I’m older than you.”

“Older,” Buffy says. Her heart is racing. “How _much_ older.”

“Much. Buffy. There’s something I have to tell you.” Angel’s across the room now, picking up one of her stakes and the mirror from her dresser. “I’m not—”

“Into me? No big. I mean, I get it. You’re _older_ you probably, like, have a girlfriend already. I mean, you’re you and I’m—” her heart is beating so _fast_ it feels like it will jump right out of her chest.

Angel hands her the stake, point towards himself. “Buffy.”

“What--?” she says, and then she looks at the mirror he’s holding up. She looks at where a reflection should be and where one clearly isn’t. Her heart stops beating. 

“I’m a—”

“You’re a—”

“Vampire.”

They stare at each other. Buffy’s heart starts beating again. 

It doesn’t feel the same. 

She says, “Explain.”

He does.

**Talent**

Cordelia has a dream. It’s not one she tells people. It’s not about who she’s going to date, or how she’s going to win homecoming queen, or how she’s going to get a ruby red corvette for her sixteenth birthday. These are all achievable dreams. Or, really, foregone conclusions.

No, Cordelia’s dream is to someday enter Juilliard. 

And then, to someday, years from now, star in her own major motion picture franchise.

Or maybe a television show. That would work too.

Cordelia sits in front of her mirror and closes her copy of Hamlet.

And she begins.

“To be, or not to be, that is the question.”

The girls’ parts always suck anyway.

**Family**

Rupert isn’t really one to follow the grain. 

Well.

He does have that whole destiny angle down pat. But—

Well, by the time his parents were his age, Rupert had been ten.

It’s not that he’s never fancied anyone. He has. It’s not even that he’s never dated.

It’s just never quite felt—well—right. 

(The closest had actually been Ethan, and that—well that says more about Rupert’s inability to follow the beaten trail than all his other relationships combined. But he’d seen the light and left that life behind. Eventually.)

But today, there's something in the air.

The library doors burst open with a flurry of motion and the woman who walks through them nearly takes his head off. “I cannot believe you still are dragging your heels on this! The front office has called to set something up with you! Three times! Every time you were mysteriously out! Or busy! Or indisposed! What does that even mean? Indisposed?”

“Indisposed?” Rupert says.

“Right, well, you’re here now, so we’re setting up a time. You’re going digital whether you want to or not. It’s the nineties, you’ve got to live with the times.”

“I beg your pardon, but who exactly are you?”

“I’m the computer teacher. Jenny Calendar.” She marches up to him and holds out her hand, expectantly.

He shakes her hand, “Mr. Giles.”

“Mister. That’s a funny name,” she says.

“Rupert,” he says.

“Rupert,” she says, and tightens her hand. Which he’s still holding.

He lets go abruptly, and backs away, almost stumbling over a table in his haste. 

There’s something about Jenny—Miss Calendar—that seems to take the air out of the room. Is it her eyes? No. Something more. That spark. That sharpness. There’s a brilliance there behind the biting temper. But no, that’s still not it, he thinks…

He thinks…

“…Rupert,” Miss Calendar says, and he realizes that time did not actually stand still, though it apparently did for him as he recalls nothing of what was just said.

“I-I-I’m sorry,” Rupert says.

“I’m sure you are,” Miss Calendar says with a wry grin. She nods her head at the clock on the wall and says, “So, seven?”

“Right you are,” Rupert says.

She walks to the library doors, but before she can exit, she turns back to him, smiles, and says, “Anyway, it was nice to meet you. Rupert.”

“And you, Miss Calendar,” he says in return.

She smirks at him, then walks through the door.

He finds himself picking up his phone and ringing his mother for the first time in a good month. 

“Hello? Rupert? Is that you? Is something wrong?” His mother’s voice sounds tinny through the transatlantic call.

“Hello Mother. I think I just met the woman I’m going to marry,” Rupert says.

“Well,” his mother says. “Tell me all about her.”

“Her name is Jenny Calendar, and she’s the most challenging person I’ve ever met.”

**Known**

“Oh my god! You won’t believe it! Tyler called me!” Harmony says, face lit up with a brilliant smile.

She purses her lips, shakes her head. 

“Oh my god! Guess what… Tyler _finally_ called me!” Harmony says, eyes wide with surprise.

She shakes her head. “No. What if…”

Harmony closes her eyes, concentrates, _hard_. “Cordy—I wanted you to be the first to know: _Tyler_ called me!”

In her mind, Cordy smiles her perfect Cordy smile.

“I know! Isn’t it just too!?” Harmony says.

“Harmony!” Her mom’s voice comes from down the hall. “Time for supper.”

“I’ll be there in a minute, Mom,” Harmony says. She takes her pen and crosses out ~~excited~~. In its place she writes “serious”. And underlines it. Three times.

“Harmony!”

“Coming mom,” Harmony says.

 **Peace**

There’s always been an almost terrible stillness to Sunnydale. The things that stalk through the night do so on wings of silence. 

At least, it _was_ quiet until _she_ came.

Some say she’s some kind of protector or something, there to keep the evil at bay. Some say she’s a mercenary, killing them only for her bounty. 

Some people say _she’s_ the actual monster-- _she’s_ the reason your mom never came home that night, _she’s_ what brought the monsters to town.

I don’t know about any of that. All I know is, I heard she was that Summers girl.

Did you know she burned down the gym at her old school?


End file.
